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The Craft of Writing: Contemporary International Horror
R1B - 001 | CCN: 28202
Katherine Guerra
Date and Time: TUWTH 9-1130A, 242 DWINELLE
4 Units
Monstrosity has long functioned as a trope in horror narratives to question and investigate tacit assumptions about the human. Understanding the monstrous involves establishing the dominant or “norm” against which monstrosity is defined, framing the monstrous as somehow deviant. Our goal in this course is to interrogate the enduring focus on monstrosity in popular narratives across the globe. More specifically, how do we understand monstrosity as an articulation of anxieties concerning the body? In what way do we understand the focus on the monstrous as speaking to anxieties concerning the body as a national subject? What traumatic eruption might the monstrous embody? Is monstrosity the precipitate of tensions surrounding gender and sexual difference? We will spend our time teasing out the implications of these questions through a range of texts, from early 20th century literature to contemporary international horror films. On a formal level, we will endeavor to develop our analytical writing skills at the college level. We will employ methods as diverse as summary reactions to peer reviews to improve our writing skills as we delve deep into the world of the monstrous to achieve a sophisticated understanding of how truly subjective the concepts of normality and monstrosity are.